


Messenger of Sympathy and Love

by quiltedspacemittens



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens All Media Works
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale wears winged sandals and looks cute af, Ficlet, M/M, first person POV, prose poetry, which i repent of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24947614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiltedspacemittens/pseuds/quiltedspacemittens
Summary: "Am well (stop). Always thinking of you (stop). Love (stop)."
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26
Collections: Ineffable Quiltedspaceficlets, Name That Author Round Five: After Dark Redux





	Messenger of Sympathy and Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the GO-Events server Name That Author challenge. Ficlets had to be 500 words or less and based around the prompt, "There is a door that should never be open. It's open."

An angel shouldn’t have a last will and testament. I know. (It’s for insurance purposes). I’ve left you my second-best bed. The ropes need tightened, there’s straw poking out of the mattress. You’d prefer a goose-down pillow, probably. Rounded out with a century of sleep.

  
Oh, there’s a desk too. Pigeon-holes stuffed with unsent telegrams. “Am well (stop). Always thinking of you (stop). Love (stop).”

  
I’ve never been able to stop, that’s the whole issue.

  
The love of angels is a one-way street. It isn’t meant to be returned. Yes, send your ten-word telegrams, directly to God. I’ve left a line open. Pass straight through me (don’t stop).

  
The thing is, you’ve always stopped.

  
The light is red (Mars, bringer of War).

  
I thought you just couldn’t get through. Upstairs wouldn’t take your packages. Return to sender. So you halted at the waystation, let me conduct the traffic. Left your love in a brown paper package on the back dock. I thought you wanted it to get lost in the shuffle, slip through on accident.

  
It never did (tied up with string).

  
It just sits. Never imposes, never presumes to shift from its place on the dock.

  
I will take pity on it, eventually, give it shelter from the rain.

  
I will forget about it. It’s only right. Pigeon-hole it into a slot, lock the door. Don’t go looking for the key under the mat, in the hollow-turtle lawn decoration. It’s not there. The key is—nevermind.

  
The next time I hear from you, the post office will be half-underwater. I’ll release ravens to your mountaintop, oversea. They'll come back hungry, empty-taloned. Return to sender.

  
Fine. I’ll try doves.

  
You write me a letter with iron gall strokes: “holy water.” The seas between us, there from the beginning. You expect me to bottle them in stained glass, stopper them with a cork. Blot grace into the water like soot against an inkstone. No, I won’t (I know my transgressions). The letter drowns in the lightless, windswept seas. Let it. Let it mingle with duckshit in this human-built pond, stagnant bloat of the river that scrabbles beneath the city. Sewer-water, fit only for filth.

  
I filter my water (cleanliness is next to godliness). Remember you are muck.

  
A pipe in my office sprouts a leak, hyssop-infused water sprinkling from the ceiling. The brown paper packaging wrinkles. The string frays.

  
It needs to be protected, in case you come back. In case there is another flood.

  
There’s a closet, full of unused mop-heads, dustpans on wheels, scum-stained buckets. A skeleton or two. It’s watertight, sealed with bitumen and pitch. A door that should never be open. Your ten-word telegram, writhing against the one-way current. It’s open. The light is green (Mercury, the winged messenger). You return to the sender with an olive branch. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will stop you. Let the letters come to me.

**Author's Note:**

> *slaps roof of 500-word ficlet* This bad boy can fit so many literary allusions!
> 
> I am deeply indebted to Albert Camus's _The Plague_ (trans. Stuart Gilbert) for the text of the telegram and for general musings on forced separation. And to Psalm 51 for its beautiful imagery. I've also borrowed bits and bobs from Genesis, Exodus, Luke, _The Tempest_ , and Holst's _The Planets_. 
> 
> The line about the "second-best bed" is a reference to Shakespeare's will. The bed was left to his wife, Anne Hathaway. The significance of the second-best bed is unclear, but one potential explanation is that it's their marriage bed.
> 
> The title comes from "The Letter" by Charles Eliot, which is engraved on the National Postal Museum building in Washington, D.C. I shoved in the U.S. Postal Service's unofficial motto too. And a bit of _The Sound of Music,_ just for tonal consistency. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Holler at me [here.](https://theseedsofdoom.tumblr.com)


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